Still, RRPS does not believe parents really have the right to opt out, according to RRPS spokeswoman Beth Pendergrass.

“We call them ‘refusals’ here just because we feel like ‘opt-out’ implies that there is an option for students not to take the test, and we really don’t think there is an option, but parents have refused to allow their kids to take the test,” she said.

The New Mexico Public Education Department also believes that there is no refusal option, citing federal mandates that students complete statewide assessments.

So apparently parental “disobedience” is on the decrease in the school district as fewer students are “refusing” the test.

Regarding federal mandates… here I thought with the Every Student Success Act states could include opt-outs in their state plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. You mean the state of New Mexico didn’t interpret it that way? What about all of that control states were supposed to get from this latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act?

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Campbell’s Law

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."